


burned but not buried

by sharkfights (feartown)



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, also i love semi-colons do not @ me, and STILL the only person on this show i truly care about is delphine cormier, and being an absolute nutcase, and i care about her the most when she's at odds with cosima, and this is the best storyline anyone on this show has ever had, it's been 84 years, n.b. please do not take this fic as me condoning her behaviour btw, no one should ever do anything of this but also i am very proud of my murder daughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 12:09:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12058707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feartown/pseuds/sharkfights
Summary: Delphine is never going to look in the mirror and see Rachel.set s3.





	burned but not buried

**Author's Note:**

> well folks i stopped watching orphan black three years ago and then right as s5 was ending i accidentally saw too many pics of delphine's face and i guess, maybe, i watched 2.5 seasons in about a week and oh BOY
> 
> does delphine take an absolutely thrilling turn as a vengeful gay madwoman in s3. what a TREAT for me, a person who cares about delphine the most when she is being shady trash and trying desperately, so desperately, to be something that at her core she's really not. like i can't believe in the year of our lord 2017 (it was 2015 but whatever, shut up) i have gotten to witness delphine, a tall newborn baby, threaten to do a murder on her ex girlfriend's girlfriend just bc she's jealous and basically no other reason. and DON'T tell me that's not it bc that's totally it, i wrote this fic about it and that makes it true. 
> 
> also sometimes i think about delphine saying the actual real words "i'm french, we enjoy lovers" and i want to monkey-climb up the side of the tallest building and just SCREAM bc i've never heard a dumber or more perfect line said in my whole life. DELPHINE

* * *

 

 

They put Delphine in first class on the way to Frankfurt, which was a good joke even for DYAD. Delphine, hunched in her seat like a misplaced ghost, felt as fragile as bees wings; felt like her skin would tear with the slightest touch. All she could think of was Cosima, alone. Cosima, maybe dead. Cosima, wondering if she would ever see Delphine again.

There was a woman sitting across the aisle from her and halfway through the flight, when she reached into her purse, Delphine flinched as though she was going to pull out a gun. She was certain, then, that she wasn’t meant to make it to Germany alive.

The woman stretched out her arm. It wasn't a gun. She just handed Delphine a tissue with an uneasy smile, like she was intruding on the small lungfuls of air Delphine was breathing in near her, trying to grind her own body into dust with the weight of grief.

“Sorry, you just look like you could use some kindness,” the woman had said. Delphine smiled thinly; she must have cried longer than she thought.

She took the tissue and wiped her eyes, the rawness of her skin making them water again. There was salt on her tongue.

“Thank you,” she said, then something in her bubbled; “Merci,” she amended, after a moment, as there seemed little need for English and the acidity those words kept leaving in her mouth now.

“Whoever they are, they aren’t worth it,” the woman said gently, and turned back to her magazine.

Delphine, hollow and ossified, felt that punch deep in her gut.

Cosima was worth planets, galaxies full of stars, but it was true that unravelling about her on a plane wasn’t an effective use of her time.

When she finally landed in Frankfurt, dry-eyed and sluggish, she went through customs and on the other side stood Marion, flanked by guards and heralding what Delphine was sure couldn’t be good news.

Perhaps it wasn’t good, Delphine had thought as she listened to what Marion had to tell her. Not _good_ , but an opportunity was opening up like a rose in front of her, petals curling outward to reveal something she could take and use to get back at DYAD and the sister-traitor who brought her here; left her trembling and exhausted.

Rachel had wanted to make things personal? Well.

Delphine was going to do her best to be that person.

 

***

  


Unfortunately, Delphine is never going to look in the mirror and see Rachel Duncan.

Factually, Delphine cannot be Rachel. Delphine’s heart is palpably alive, readable like a neon sign or a billboard in a field, and it beats in time. Delphine is organic, raised in the wild, her body free of metal and the grip of science. In her deepest places Delphine can never reach Rachel. She should never want to.

She does, though. Want to.

Delphine straightens her curls so her hair fans over her shoulders; so it moves by itself like a separate thing. Idly, she will smooth the tangles out, the tangles that keep telling her she doesn’t want to be stretched this way. She doesn’t want to be forced into this suit of armour that clanks and screeches as though it is manufactured but somehow living.

She goes to see Rachel in her sickbed, that pad over her eye. The things she wants to say to Rachel Duncan are sprawling, savannah-wide and vicious. But Delphine doesn’t need all of them. Her thumb in that wound on Rachel’s face, the same way Rachel put her thumb in wounds of Delphine’s, that’s enough. That’s energising and sickening and it’s going to haunt her, sometime, the way these things always haunt people like Delphine. But for now it feels like progress. 

After: Rachel’s perfume is rich like honey when Delphine puts it on, rubbing her wrists on the skin under her ears. Rachel’s lipstick is red, her clothes are monotones. This is all easy to remember, easy to use as a code. Rachel’s phone, when Delphine procures it from a drawer, has no thumb-scan - because who would be foolish enough to touch it without her permission?

Delphine reads every text, not that there are many. Rachel is powerful but she isn’t stupid; she deletes delicate information and keeps the things that feel like mementos instead. It makes Delphine feel pity for her. Rachel is like a robot who knows what feelings are meant to be yet never feels them herself. She just projects them under her metal skin, unflinching, while Delphine still has messages on her phone of ex-lovers from years ago; even the ones that leave sour notes, bitter tastes on the back of her tongue. Delphine always wants to hold onto every feeling her heart has ever given her, but if Rachel doesn’t do that Delphine believes she can’t either.

Yes. Clean slate. Strong message. DYAD’s shiny golden face, restored to factory settings.

And under it, she hides one thing.

This one thing, this resolute and stalwart promise made long enough ago that it has hardened into something solid and real: I will love all of you.

  
  


With Rachel coursing through her veins (diluted and nauseating), Delphine stands in the hall of Felix’s building and tells Cosima she has to end things.

She tells herself it will be better, once she goes back overseas to Marion. Through those wrenching sobs that feel like drowning she thinks being apart will give them time and it will help.

  


It doesn’t.

When she comes home to roost at DYAD again, there’s something that heats angrily under her skin whenever she sees Cosima. Delphine had never fully understood that blur of love and hate, it wasn’t in her nature, but the more Cosima’s hostility rucks up against Delphine’s want for answers, she thinks she gets it. Her heart has never burned like this: red, raw, trembling with a fever. She has never felt so much like she's wanted to pin someone down with all her might, a hand at their throat so they know how much she needs them.

The problem is Cosima’s callousness is something she can’t fault. Delphine did this, Delphine chose to love them all and not just one. She’s the one who decided they had to let go.

Delphine remembers the bright giddiness that bled through everything when she first met Cosima, the clumsiness of how much she wanted to love her. That’s not what she thought at the time, of course; that’s not the emotion she attached to the laugh-breaths, the running, the clink of wine bottles and the slide of Cosima’s arm. Not until after.

After, when Cosima kissed her; eyes closed, lips trembling, her mouth setting fires.

After, when Delphine fled her apartment and stood with her back against a wall and touched her mouth with her shaking freezing fingers.

324B21’s file did mention the phrase “homosexual tendencies”. Clinical and brief, it had barely registered to Delphine when she took on the monitor position. Something else to use if she needed, but nothing that would compromise her; nothing that would get in the way.

Now that’s all that seems to be in the way. It’s Cosima, taking her homosexual tendencies out on someone else while Delphine can only watch from afar. While Delphine tries so hard to fit into Rachel and steer the ship the way it needs to go. She was meant to become someone who could look at Cosima, now, and not feel the soft shape of her own heart and the thudding blood; the heft of her lungs as she struggles to breathe in and out just because Cosima is looking at her.

But this is where she and Rachel cleave away. Different animals. It’s never mattered to Rachel the way people look at her.

It matters to Delphine and it’s a salt-rub to see Shay, stupid and oblivious and pretty, not having to _try_ \- just being herself, just being herself with Cosima. It makes Delphine’s blood burn. Shay is self-assured in the same broad-boned and careless way Cosima is; they wear it threadbare, comfortable, reach for it as naturally as their oldest coat. There’s no one they have to explain themselves to. There’s no family still sitting back home wrinkling their noses and saying “une _femme_ , ma chérie?”. There’s no shift, re-settle.

There’s no doubt, nothing tumbling sickly the way it does in Delphine's gut even as she _knows_ ; she knows she loves Cosima.

Their ease makes her feel furious and small, like they’re laughing at her about it. Delphine, barely broken-in, still skittish and easily spooked by her sexuality.

When Shay is gone from her lab visit and Cosima is still holding onto the gloss of it, the way she can flaunt someone else in front of Delphine, Delphine finds herself saying - incredibly stupidly - that she’s not jealous. She knows it doesn’t help. She knows it only lays bare that she is jealous, that she's seen it all and it has gotten to her, well and truly.

Delphine, spelling it out, wants back that familiarity with Cosima that still aches between them, taffy-stretched but still holding. She would fight battles for Cosima. A warship. Sails. The tang of salt and blood. She has been fighting already, she just wants Cosima to _know_.

 

Later, she touches Cosima’s hand.

 

Later, there’s a kiss, a million light-years condensed into a second. She says, “You should have _trusted_ me,” and the hurt on Cosima’s face is satisfying. Sticks like caramel.

  
  


Delphine thinks that if nothing else she might be learning to enjoy grudges. There’s something about the way they congeal in her belly like tallow, just waiting for a touch of flame to melt and spread. She thought it would be harder to hold onto them than this.

  
  


She hadn’t counted on seeing Cosima outside that night, clutching Shay’s folder under her arm as she walks down the street. It’s freezing out and as much as she wants to drive past - Cosima is not DYAD’s concern anymore, after all - she finds herself slowing down the car.

Cosima jumps when the window slides down next to her, trained now to be wary of anyone wanting to talk to her out in the open.

“Cosima,” Delphine says, measuring out the words, “Let me give you a ride.”

Her response is immediate and thick through a cough. “I don’t need your pity, I can walk fine on my own.”

“It is pity, that I don’t want you to freeze to death?” Delphine asks, putting a laugh into her voice. She doesn’t care; she doesn’t feel a hurricane building in her chest; Cosima doesn’t work under her or next to her or near her anymore and it’s fine; she can’t feel the burn of it in her lungs like smoke.

Cosima falters, she assumed after firing her Delphine was ready to snarl and bite; she was ready to fight back in kind.

Unsure, she takes a step forward. Delphine unbuckles her seatbelt and unlocks the door and waits. After a moment, Cosima gets in with a rustle of fabric and bag; a sound Delphine is so used to hearing that it feels like she’s hearing it now in a dream. Cosima puts her things down and the dossier on Shay slips between them, falling onto the gearbox before sliding off onto the floor next to Cosima’s feet. She doesn’t move to pick it up.

Delphine drives on; the door-locks click shut.

“Where do you need to go?” Delphine asks, and she can feel Cosima weighing up whether or not to tell her the real address.

“Dundas and Parliament,” Cosima says finally, settling on cross streets as a compromise.

“You were going to walk all that way?”

Cosima huffs like Delphine is stupid. “It’s not that far, Delphine. We don’t all have private DYAD cars at our disposal. Or drivers licenses.”

They cruise down Broadview in silence. They haven’t been like this in a while, in such close quarters with no one else around. There’s no space between them, Delphine’s hand rests on the gear shift and wants to reach further, touch the round spread of Cosima’s thigh so close to her fingers. Her resolve starts to flake, pastry-thin.

It’s strange and futile and Delphine hates it, the way the silence presses and bends, clotting into every corner of the car until she can’t breathe. The engine purrs and turns, the quiet is so big the wheels are a roar on the road beneath them. They both know why they can’t say a word, and they both know there’s only one reason Delphine stopped the car, why Cosima got in, why their seatbelts are still hanging up at their sides.

After they cross the bridge Cosima looks out at the bright lights of the aquatic centre and says, “You can let me out here.”

“But this isn’t--I can take you further.”

Even as she’s saying it she stops the car and turns it off. Cosima is looking at her, silhouetted by the sluice of yellow coming in the side windows. It’s impossible to read her expression, but then she leans forward and Delphine’s hand is on the back of her neck; Delphine pulls her in, pulls Cosima’s mouth to hers and her love unfurls again. Here it is, that soaring of bird-flight, the world holding itself carefully still so Delphine can kiss Cosima and come home.

Cosima feels angry under her hands, like something is ready to crawl out of her skin. Delphine pushes into it, curls her tongue into Cosima’s mouth and drags at her bottom lip with her thumb, over and over. Cosima doesn’t touch Delphine; she sheds her scarf and coat even as they kiss, even as Delphine’s hands still grip at her, rough over her shoulder and down across her chest. Fabric pulls; it feels like being alive.

A hand crosses Delphine’s lap and finds the trigger for her chair, pushes it back as far as it will go. Then Cosima is in her lap, knees digging into the sides of Delphine’s hips and the swelter of her is everything.

There’s no time for them, there’s nothing that needs exploring or heating up or easing into because they’re fire, they’re burning; Delphine just needs to wrest a hand into Cosima’s leggings and press to slicken her fingers. Gasping, she moves them not in gentle strokes but fast and hard, rhythmless so Cosima can’t keep up. It makes her feel charged, storm-full, possessive. She can’t tell if it’s minutes passing or seconds.

Cosima whines and it comes from somewhere deep. She’s biting at Delphine’s mouth and Delphine doesn’t let up, her wrist aching and trying to buckle; her fingers wet and hot and twining. Her hand is urgent now, she wants Cosima to say her name even as she understands Cosima won’t - not now, not here.

Delphine turns her head, mouth angled against Cosima’s ear, and she listens to the way Cosima’s breath harshes in her throat; the way she gulps for air with tiny yelping sounds. It’s a position that feels so familiar, so honeyed and sweet with nostalgia, that for a moment all Delphine’s frustration and grudge-bearing and anger-sickness wash away. For a moment they’re just two breathing bodies in space, and there’s the grab of Cosima’s hand in her hair, tight but not painful,; Delphine’s lips feeling over the spot Cosima always shudders at. Cosima’s hips bucking desperately, ecstatically, into her hand. It makes her heart want to burst with it. It makes her wonder if Cosima feels it too.

With her teeth flush to Cosima’s skin she pushes the feeling back and says, “you are going to come for me, Cosima.”

Cosima, with an angry shudder, does, and Delphine can tell she was hoping she wouldn’t.

For a second, Delphine thinks Cosima is going to get off her now, fumble back across the car and out the door. Done and dusted. But then her hands disappear between them and Delphine feels a tug at her zipper.

Cosima’s fingers are cold and she gasps when they touch her, all of them at once, her hand pressing up and holding still. Cosima’s free hand takes Delphine’s fingers, still damp and sticky, and lifts them to her mouth. Sucks them inside.

Delphine whimpers, not expecting the brazen way Cosima looks at her as her tongue slides against Delphine’s fingertips. Her hips, their own entity, grind down against Cosima’s hand.

Cosima looks grimly pleased; it’s what she wanted, and lets go of Delphine’s fingers with a wet sound. She leans forward, looms, licks her teeth like a lion. Delphine’s hips rut and it’s only going to take a minute, all hopped up and stringy from the way Cosima feels and the heat of her mouth and the way her finger-bones are heavy against her like she’s home.

She comes quietly, her forehead nested in the gap between Cosima’s shoulder and her neck, her breath rough in her mouth. Cosima, sudden and businesslike now, wipes her hands on her leggings and opens the door; climbs out Delphine’s side without a second thought.

“Hand me my coat.”

“Cosima, I don’t want--”

“Don’t push it, okay?”

Delphine hands Cosima her coat and retrieves Shay’s file from the floor, half expecting Cosima not to take it.

She does. The door shuts. Delphine tries not to break in two.

  


It doesn’t take long for Cosima to read the file. Not as long as Delphine thought it would take.

Out the window the sky is dark with lumbering clouds; it’s going to rain. The elevator dings onto her office’s floor and there’s something delicious about the way her chair turns in that moment. The way it reveals Cosima looking fraught, looking for something in Delphine’s face that will help anchor her to shore.

Cosima hates every second of having to grovel and Delphine loves all of them, every grit of Cosima’s teeth and clench of her fists. _You should have trusted me_.

She asks Cosima why she should help and if the room weren’t so filled with urgency it would be funny, a joke to think Delphine wouldn’t help Cosima no matter what. A promise still lives under her skin, churning and building itself into a storm; it resides over every decision she makes.

Delphine is never going to be tyrannical.

Her teeth are too small, her body doesn’t know how to be so hard. She can’t be as remote, not nearly as far out to sea as Rachel. Even if she’s learned to be more calculated and quiet, how to lose the breathlessness and easy smiles that used to spread across her face as clumsily as a child’s drawing, her heart is going to stay the same.

However, she has learned to create scales from her skin, polished and tessellating. She knows a little better how to hold herself at angles and speak in idle threats whether she means them or not. And when she thinks of Shay, who stands between her and Cosima being safe, being hers, it’s easier to see how Rachel does this kind of thing so naturally. Easier to see, if given a chance, how one could feel more powerful than a god.

Two roads have diverged in a wood and Delphine knows which one brings Cosima back to her. She says one thing.

 

“Leave it with me.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> p.s. i've idly wondered what building they were using as dyad since i started watching this show again bc it was very familiar to me and when i finally looked it up earlier it's the BUILDING I LIVED NEXT TO FOR 6 MONTHS and if not for delphine taking first place i'd be the dumbest fucking person alive


End file.
